


Ameliorate

by revolutionator



Category: Dangan Ronpa
Genre: Endgame, Gen, PTSD, Spoilers, Trans Character
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-07-29
Updated: 2014-07-26
Packaged: 2017-12-21 18:32:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,141
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/903479
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/revolutionator/pseuds/revolutionator
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>[ENDGAME SDR2 SPOILERS] After even the happiest ending you will eventually have to hurt, and heal, and move on.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. welcome to dangan island

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not even sure why I'm publishing this as it's primarily catharsis writing. I really love the ending of SDR2 but the thought of what happened afterwards nagged at me over and over until I sat down and wrote. 
> 
> There'll be at least three more chapters, but who even knows if it'll end there. We'll see.

_He is the first to wake up._

_Fitting, because it was his idea after all, but it also means he wakes and remembers nothing for ten horrible, vacant minutes, looks around at three kind and worried faces that he does not recognise, knows nothing other than the dim green light and the heavy, slick weight of his hair on his shoulders and down his back._

_‘Hinata-kun!’ one of them says, and that sparks something. He’s Hinata Hajime, and that thought brings an inexplicable wave of relief with it. His hair is too long. His chest is heavy, unsupported, sore. Why is he sat in a tank of amniotic fluid? Where is everyone? Who is everyone?_

_‘He’s stable,’ says the girl with pale hair. She reminds him of someone. His brain hurts. His stitches throb. Why does he have stitches._

_The others wake up soon after, all dishevelled, many of them with torn clothing or uneven hair or missing parts. Their memories are all sketchy, but their bodies work well – disturbingly well for such prolonged periods of stasis, but the agents handwave it, say it’s by grace of top-grade technology. The three agents sit with them for a long time and answer as many questions as they can._

_There are many, many more questions that they cannot._

Makoto Naegi and his two companions stayed AWOL for a further three days, to best ensure that the so-called ‘leftovers of despair’ would remain stable (though Naegi joked it was mostly to oversee their haircuts). It was Hinata who gently suggested that if they didn’t leave, the foundation would surely send more recruits out after them. And those ones, he said, could be armed. The Foundation members shared a number of uneasy glances and agreed without further comment.

Everyone did not go to the pier with Hinata to see the trio off, but they did all gather in the research facility to say goodbye. Owari enveloped Kirigiri and Togami in a surprise bear hug, one that left both of them undignified, wheezing wrecks, and Hinata noticed both of their hands twitch to their pockets, or rather something _concealed_ in their pockets, so slight and quick a movement that it was barely detectable. He wished he hadn’t seen it.

‘You will write to us, won’t you?’

Sonia – sweet, lovely Sonia, with her scarred lips and air of gentle authority; Sonia, the only one of them that Togami would address directly – hadn’t noticed anything amiss. Kirigiri and Togami’s shoulders settled, and Hinata let out a breath he hadn’t noticed he was holding.

‘Our messages are tracked,’ Togami said.

‘It might compromise your location if something were to go wrong,’ Kirigiri said.

‘Of course we will,’ said Naegi, and he smiled at everyone in the room.

 

 

Hinata went with them not because they needed an escort, but because he wanted to see for himself where the port was. Waking up from a sustained period in a simulation was bound to take its toll, especially when the simulation in question had a few key differences from the real thing. Not that Hinata could even remember the simulation fully. It was a whole other level of disorientation.

He stopped at the top of the walkway down to the beach. ‘Have a safe trip.’

‘Yeah,’ Togami said to Kirigiri as though Hinata was not present, then started on the walkway down. Kirigiri gave his retreating back a look that was equal parts irritation and grudging fondness before she turned back to Hinata to look him in the face.

‘You’re sure that you don’t want to come with us.’

Hinata shrugged. He could feel the sweat budding on his brow from having her fierce, analytical eyes trained directly on his own, but he managed to hold eye contact. ‘We’ll be okay.’

‘You understand we’d give you our sworn protection? We wouldn’t allow anyone to harm you.’

He said, ‘I know.’

She stayed there motionless for another few seconds, expression fixed. Then her gaze travelled beyond him, to the hot tangle of palm trees lining the road they’d walked together, the streams of dappled light on the floor. Eventually she sighed and tucked her hair behind her ear.

‘We’ll send provisions somehow,’ she muttered. ‘…Good luck.’

‘Thanks.’

She turned on her heel and strode after her colleague, not bothering to wait for Naegi. It was as though she expected him to linger, perhaps after a long career of them departing in this same sequential order. They must have been working together for a while since they beat Enoshima the first time, Hinata realised, which brought a dissonant pang in the pit of his stomach.

 Memories or no memories, he and everyone else on the island were totally displaced in the chronology of their own lives. A delayed graduation, with nothing to show for it but the scars across Sonia’s mouth, Owari’s missing fingers, the wound that cut through Kuzuryuu’s stomach like a seam. The stitches in his own head. He reached for them subconsciously with shaky fingers. Still there.

Naegi was still there, too.

He turned to face the sea and the waiting ship. It was as beautiful a day as any of the simulated ones, warm sunlight and a softly undulating ocean. There was gullsong on the breeze, and two waiting figures stood in quiet conversation on the shore.

Hinata suddenly didn’t want him to leave. _Don’t go yet_ , he almost said, _you saw how both of your friends flinched at Owari. They’re scared of us relapsing, and I kind of am too. Our memories are really patchy and distorted and I can’t remember that girl’s face properly. Stay with us until you’re sure we’re alright._

‘I wish I could stay,’ Naegi said. Hinata must have looked startled, because he laughed. ‘This is probably the only place in the world unaffected by the Incident, y’know. It’s a really good place for you guys to live.’

 ‘Mmm.’

The panic passed as instantaneously as it had emerged, and Hinata was left embarrassed that he’d felt it at all.

‘Hinata-kun?’ Naegi’s voice was warm. ‘You guys are going to be fine, I’m sure of it. I have a good feeling about all of you. If anyone can make it, it’s you guys.’

‘You sound like Owari with all that good feeling stuff,’ Hinata mumbled, but he smiled back. He felt better.

‘So Owari-san thinks it’s gonna work out well too, doesn’t she? That’s two of us.’

 ‘At least three of us,’ Hinata said, ‘More, probably. Have a good trip back.’

‘See you round, Hinata-kun.’

 

 

Hinata dawdled on his way back, and not just because of the reality vertigo that hit whenever he walked too fast or diverted from any of the half-remembered paths from the simulation. By the time he reached the cabin complex the sun was low-hanging in the sky, and everyone had already assembled for dinner judging from both the clatter-banging noises and the smell of cooked meat eking from the slats in the windows.

When he reached the top of the stairs everyone turned to look at him. Sonia was stood next to a pot of nabe and guarding it from Owari’s desperate, pleading hands. Souda sat at a table with his head propped up on his elbows. Kuzuryuu, sat at a different table, already eating in quick little sips and bites.  He fixed his one cooperative eye on Hinata’s face. The other stayed shut.

‘They’re gone?’

Despite Souda’s blatant gesturing – or perhaps _in_ spite of – Hinata took one of the other seats at Kuzuryuu’s table. ‘Yeah. They’re gonna cover for us.’

‘I still don’t understand the full reason behind everything that occurred,’ Sonia said. She brought a bowl of nabe over to the table and set it in front of Hinata, her brow very slightly creased. She took the other seat at their table, again in spite of serious verbal cues from Souda. ‘Though sometimes I _think_ I do, and it’s so close I can taste it…but then I forget it again. It seems there is quite a lot I have forgotten.’

She looked around the room to a collection of pensive faces.

‘You all too?’ She laughed. ‘I am not going to lie and say it’s not a relief.’

 ‘I remember some shit fine. I remember _them_ ,’ Kuzuryuu said. ‘Comin’ up here I thought I saw ‘em for a second. All of ‘em, bustling around the kitchen and joking and shit.’

Akane dropped herself down into the remaining seat at Kuzuryuu’s table, bringing the rest of the pot of nabe with her. She placed the still-warm pot upon the gap of chair between her thighs, ignoring Sonia’s little squeak of concern, and scooped a spoonful straight into her mouth. ‘Nidai n’ them? Me too. Not just here though. The market, the park…Sure were a lot of guys we lost.’

‘Nidai-san, Tanaka-san, Pekoyama-san, Koizumi-san…’ Sonia counted names off on her fingers. ‘Komaeda-san.  Saionji-san, Hanamura-san…’

‘Togami,’ Souda said. Injured by the gathering of everyone on the next table over, he had swerved his chair around and was leaning faux-casually over the back of it.

‘That ain’t the right name, you shithead.’

‘It is, you Armani-wearin’ freak! Hinata, you tell ‘em that was his name, you remember-‘

Hinata put a hand up, unable to get the words out. ‘Do you remember the girl with the really soft voice?’

Sonia cocked her head. ‘Tsumiki-san?’

‘No, shorter, with like… lighter hair, and I think she was a little chubby? Maybe?’  The image of her in his head wavered, flickered out altogether.  ‘Forget it.’

‘Aren’t those tank thingies labelled?’ Owari picked her ear morosely and then took another gulp of nabe. ‘Just track her down in there. Did you date her before we got here or somethin’?’

‘No, that’s not it…’

‘I could go with you to find her,’ Sonia offered.

She pushed her bowl of nabe away from herself, barely eaten, and folded her hands in her lap. Her mouth was pursed, allowing her scars to accentuate the creases in her face. Those scars made it easier than ever to imagine her negotiating herself out of hostage situations, Hinata thought, then wondered how the hell he knew she’d been involved in hostage situations in the first place, then remembered she had probably told him in one of two forgotten lives. This thought pattern was already familiar enough to be really, really annoying.

‘If Sonia-san’s going, I wanna go too,’ Souda said. Hinata noticed Sonia’s lips draw tighter together.

‘We should ALL go,’ Kuzuryuu said. He picked up his own bowl, then Souda’s (‘I wasn’t finished!’ ‘It’s _empty_ , numbnuts’) and the spotless pot Akane was scraping for remains.  ‘Come help me wash this shit up, we should head out before it gets dark.’

So they finished up eating and followed Kuzuryuu to the kitchen. When every last bowl and plate had been scrubbed and dried and placed onto the right shelf (or close enough, in some cases), they gathered in the foyer and set out into the dying sunlight, moving as one shuffling unit towards the research facility.

They stood around for a while outside. Breathed the late afternoon air, talked about how they had to work on getting a bridge put in, avoided looking at the door.

And then finally entered.


	2. good night

Not one of them had visited the Research Facility since they had woken up, and with good reason. Even without the bad memories that clung to the place like old ghosts, the building was downright gloomy.  All power in the building was concentrated downstairs, and the lighting facilities were lacking – there were some small lights to mark the route downstairs, but they did nothing to alleviate the creepiness that came from wandering around abandoned computer desks in a dark room. 

There was some light in the basement, but that wasn’t much better. All pods in the room glowed in neon shades of blue and green, even the vacated ones. It looked very like something out of some low-budget science fiction movie – the LEDs in the floor and the light spilling from the cocoon systems pulsed together in one nauseating rhythm, accompanied by the whirring percussion of the central computer system.

‘This joint,’ Kuzuryuu announced, ‘is hideous.’

‘Fuck off,’ said Souda. ‘It’s functional, ain’t it? Don’t gotta look pretty.’

Hinata guessed that was true, but also didn’t see the need for bright green circuitry. That stuff was superficial, wasn’t it? When designing their creepy rehabilitation programme or psycho-therapy simulator or whatever this thing was meant to be, they could have at least tried to make it look less like it belonged in a Neal Stephenson story. 

He didn’t say any of this aloud. Instead he walked towards one of the pods, and he wasn’t the only one – Sonia, upon entering, made a deliberate dart for one installed at the far side of the room. Kuzuryuu hung back to grumble at the décor some more but then padded towards a pod on the left hand side. Akane followed suit, and eventually so did Souda. They moved in a strange fishbowl formation, weaving in-between the strange metal contraptions, stooping to check names and then stretching up on tiptoe to match it with the faces below each glass window.

 

The first pod Hinata checked belonged, oddly enough, to the Tsumiki-san Sonia had brought up when asked about soft-voiced girls. It only took one look for him to confirm she wasn’t the girl she was looking for – the hair was too long, too dark, her face too pointed and peaky. Very pretty, though. Her brow was furrowed and her lips twitched every couple of seconds or so – maybe she was having a nightmare?

He moved on, while trying – failing - not to think too deeply about that.

 

The next pod he arrived at belonged to Nagito Komaeda.

The person inside was very familiar. Another pointed face, though this one was smiling and idyllic in its stasis. A cloud of hair in white: natural at the roots, fried and tinted at the ends.  If Hinata tilted his head just so, he could see the rest of the body, with the arms crossed over a narrow chest. Komaeda had just one hand. The other ended in a bandaged stump.  Hinata’s eyes skipped over it quickly.

There _were_ memories connected to this guy, low-saturation, poor quality recordings with the volume rolled too low. A face above Hinata’s with wide inquisitive eyes. The smell of salt. His own name, whispered in curiosity and then reverence and then disdain.

Hinata put his hand up against the pod case and let it support most of his weight. He was shaking.

 

‘Oy, Hinata?’

Owari.

‘She ain’t here.’

‘What?’

Owari went to roll her eyes and repeat herself, but stopped halfway. ‘Hey, you alright?’

_Woah, I must look awful._

He pushed himself back onto his feet, and turned to face her. Looking away from Komaeda’s cyber-coffin helped to steady him, and when he talked his voice worked well: ‘I’m fine. Who’s not here?’

‘The girl you were talking ‘bout. Light hair? Short, chubby? No one like that here. ‘Less you mean Hanamura.’

_No, I didn’t..._

He looked over the rest of the room, and the clustered gang of people painted in mid-tones by the poor lighting.  Sonia was a little way behind Owari, holding her elbows tight as though the pressure was everything holding her together; Souda, of course, a couple of steps behind her. Kuzuryuu was still stood by the pod he’d walked to at the start, but he turned, like Hinata’s line of sight was a nudge in the back.  Both eyes were damp.

‘Anyone remember how Pekoyama died?’ His voice croaked as he talked, but his expression stayed defiant as ever.

‘Apologies, but my recovered memories do not span that far yet. I’m sure it’s the same for Tanaka-san?’

‘Somethin’ about a stampede? No, fuck, that’s stupid. Forget I said anythin’.’ Kuzuryuu slumped against the pod. ‘The hell are we even trying to do here? We should have gone with those Foundation assholes.’

‘They’d have killed us,’ Souda grumbled, but to his shoes, so everyone could pretend that he hadn’t said anything. ‘Plus, we had to stay here to look for Hinata’s imaginary girlfriend.’

‘She’s _real_ ,’ Hinata argued, but the conviction was sapping from his voice. He couldn’t even hold onto that vague half-image he’d had of her before, so how could he expect to argue for her? No one else would have even remembered she was missing without him.

‘Just sayin’, but I can talk up a storm ‘bout how my girlfriend in Fukuoka is real too. You get what I mean?’

‘Shut up, you piece of shit,’ Kuzuryuu said.

It wasn’t a rebuttal. Hinata’s stomach tied itself into another unhappy knot. 

A couple of moments of morose silence passed while everyone avoided each other’s eyes and Hinata’s heartbeat escalated into a frantic tarantella. Then he felt a hand slipping into his own. Any illusion that it might have been Sonia’s was shattered when the hand squeezed tight around his and nearly broke his wrist.

‘I don’ remember her one bit,’ Owari said, ‘but Hinata wouldn’t lie, ‘cuz he knows I’d beat him up if he did. So I guess she’s gotta be real.’

‘Yeah, definitely.’ Kuzuryuu gave whoever was in the container one final, wistful look before he walked over to join the cluster of students in the centre of the room. He clapped Hinata on the back, but not very hard. More of a pat than anything else.  

Sonia took hold of Hinata’s other hand. ‘Maybe they simply stored her in a somewhat different facility to this one?  Her circumstances could have certainly differed from our own...’

Hinata looked from earnest face to earnest face – even Souda mumbled an ashamed ‘ _Alright_ I guess she’s real, whatever’ –and let his bruised fingers grip the girls’ hands in return. The ropes of anxiety around his heart loosened just a little. He took one deep breath, and then another.

 ‘And we’ll figure out a way to get everyone back,’ he said. It came out sounding more like a question than he would have liked, but Sonia nodded enthusiastically enough for it not to matter. She and Owari kept him anchored as he spoke, ‘Everyone. Including her.’

 

 

That night was as hot as all the ones preceding it. Hinata lay on top of the coverlet, running through the usual internal war of whether to take his binder off yet or not, when someone knocked on the cabin door.

This one action had an interesting number of reactions. Firstly, Hinata sat bolt upright in his bed, suddenly scared – no, _convinced_ – that a murder had occurred somewhere on the island, and this was Monokuma’s new method of delivering the news when deprived of TV monitors. Then his brain switched gears with breakneck speed and insisted _it is Komaeda, Komaeda is probably going to be behind that door if you answer it, just stay on the bed and don’t answer._

Another knock, louder. Angrier?

_Don’t answer it!_

He got up.

_Shit..._

He took one step towards the door. Blood beat. His heart felt like a heavy bomb in his chest.

_Thumpthumpthump._

Beat beat beat beat beat beat.

He reached to touch the door handle.

Owari’s voice boomed through the crack in the door: ‘Yo, Hinata, you asleep?’

\-- Which melted the panic considerably. Now he was just embarrassed.

_Just as well I kept this thing on._

 ‘No, I’m up. Wait a minute.’

He slipped his shirt back on and buttoned it up. Considered putting his tie back on as well, decided not to, and almost answered the door before going back to the dresser and getting it anyway.

‘Hinata! The hell are you DOING in there?’

‘Sorry.’

He opened the door to find her pressed right up against it. She fell on top of him in an ungainly heap, not that there was much other way for a person to fall when they had such quantities of limb and torso and hair as Owari did.

She didn’t even bother to get up properly. She squatted on his stomach and peered down at him instead.

‘I was thinkin’,’ she started. ‘We’re all gonna have to try an’ make do with what we got, aren’t we? Like, even though so many of us’re missing.’

 ‘Yes...?’ Hinata blinked up at her. ‘Why, what do you mean?’

‘I _mean_ ,’ she said, ‘that since ol’ grandpa Nidai ain’t around anymore, I really need... someone to do it with.’

_What the-_

‘So you’re up to bat, Hinata. I trust you, I guess, ‘n I dunno why it is that I do, but that’s how it is. So you gotta do it with me. I can’t sleep without it.’

Hinata had gone through a very violent cycle of emotions in a very short space of time. It was for this reason that he couldn’t settle on an emotion to have after hearing Owari’s little speech – he just sat there, frozen, with a neutral expression on his face.  At least he hoped it was neutral.

 ‘Owari,’ he managed after twenty seconds of inaction, ‘what is ‘it’?’

‘That massage thing. With the real forceful pushes, and the muscle unwindin’, _it_! Are you gonna do it with me or not?’

_Oh thank God._

He was nodding before he could even stop himself, meaning he was taken completely off-guard when Akane whipped her shirt off. It was up to Hinata to avert his eyes until she flopped on his bed, mercifully face-down, and waved him over with one imperious arm.

He hovered over her for a couple of seconds, hands curled into spider-shapes.  He waited for her to give him a signal to start but none came, so he slung his legs over her instead. He pressed his thumbs into the coarse skin of her back and she gave a little wriggle and an 'mm' of appreciation.

_This feels so weird..._

He pressed his fingertips in again, scared to go too hard but goaded on by the noises she hissed into his pillow. He had no idea how Nidai gave her massages. They must have been more forceful than he could manage, with such soft forearms and worried shoulders. Akane gave a frustrated sigh and sat up of her own accord.

'Sorry,' he said (while tactfully averting his eyes).

'Ain't your fault. Reckon Sonia would do it with me?'

_Weirder things have turned out to be Novoselic tradition, haven't they?_

Owari didn’t seem to expect an answer.  She stretched upwards and took her shirt back from the bedside, uncaring of if Hinata was watching or not. She buttoned it up with a few clumsy swipes of her fingers, then let out a great sigh of air and dropped herself once more on his bed, on her back this time.

‘Ol’ Nidai looked even older in that big tank thing,’ she said.

‘Yeah. Well, we did too, didn’t we? ’

‘And Pekoyama, I went to go see her with the little gangster guy-‘

‘-Kuzuryuu-‘

‘-Yeah, him. Makes me sad thinkin’ about them all gettin’ older in those tanks and not being able to see us...’ She rolled over onto her side, head propped up on her hand.  ‘Hey, Hinata, why can’t that mechanic dude just put an electric current through ‘em and wake ‘em up?’

Hinata winced just thinking about it. ‘I don’t think that’s how it works...’

‘Well we gotta think of _something_ ,’ she said. ‘We can’t just sit around and wait. You reckon if I punched Nidai’s tank real hard he’d get up?’

‘Probably not. Could we talk about this in the morning?’

‘Mm,’ she said. She swung her legs over so that she was sitting up once more, but she didn’t get off the bed.

 He sat down next to her and tentatively poked her arm. ‘Owari, are you okay?’

‘No. What? Yeah. Shut up.’

‘Do you...’ He could already feel the blood rushing to his face with the worry she would take it the wrong way- ‘Do you want to sleep in here with me? Or I could go to your place, or... I know it’s scary-’

She tensed up all at once. He saw the drawstrings at her shoulders pull taught until her back set itself straight and rigid, all of her joints locked into firm position. Her fingers snapped to her palms and tucked in tight, disguising the absence of the smallest finger on her right hand, the longest on her left.

‘I ain’t _scared_ ,’ she said. ‘Where you get that idea from?’

‘Just, the talking over and over... and it’s kind of creepy sleeping alone. You don’t _have_ to.’

Owari’s face stayed guarded. She did let her hands unclench, and after a moment or two reached out and gestured for Hinata to meet them with his. She closed her hands around his fingers again, and mercifully, didn’t squeeze them tight this time.  Her fingers were warm and a little sweaty.

‘Did we talk about me gettin’ creeped out some time?’ Voice lower, way more unsure. Hinata sympathised. ‘I’m sure we musta done at one point... In that spooky room with all the irons...’

_Sounds familiar, alright._

The little crown of scars round Hinata’s head began their patented ache. Little snatches of dialogue. Concern. Owari’s family? She told him about her family, where she grew up. About her hobbies. How she was scared...

 _He_ was the one who squeezed her hands, very tenderly, before he retreated his own. ‘You’re scared of ghosts. I remember.’

‘Sh-shut up...!’

‘It’s fine. You can stay in here as long as you want if it’ll make you feel better.’

She looked him right in the eyes. Hinata was relieved to see the tense shoulders had relaxed, and the mulish expression had mostly receded – she must still trust him, even without every last memory of how she’d gotten to that point. That made him feel kind of weird, but at least he could relate.

‘I’ll sleep on the floor,’ she mumbled, and didn't explain why she preferred it. Like she'd already told him once before.

That was a good sign, too.

 


	3. promise

_He dreams and he dreams in kindly static_

_With conflicting images. Half of them incompatible with the others and all of them blurred and frayed and torn into jagged edges, sunlight here and sulphur_

_Zeroing in on a poorly painted ceiling that he won't allow himself to think of as 'disappointing'. While the numbness, the numbness, and fingers raking carelessly in his head. Persists. Cold voices. Brain dead. Dead. Dddd. He dies on a cold table thinking_ that ceiling is far too ugly for this school _and it is all deeply undignified. He is warm, warm. He is too warm._

_Wavewhispers and Ibuki's beautiful angled mess of a face turning towards him, no no no not like that Hajime-chan, this is how you skip a rock, like you're slammin' out a monster chord in the ocean's face -- Laughter behind them, Sonia hugging her knees in delight. He laughs too._

_Sonia with her mouth torn open. She spits carmine into the air above her and her giggles catch way too deep down in the chamber of her throat. Ibuki glassy-eyed and feral, teasing her pierced tongue out of her lips to lick clean the skin around it. Very little of the assorted bodygunk spattering her skin is her own._

_A strange woman's mouth on his ear, humming in sing-song, excited. Teeth in his neck. Electric._

_'Kamukura,' she whispers to him like a lullaby, 'Kamukura, Kamukura, Kamukura,'_

_No,_

_he struggles through the boredom, not those memories, keep them out. Out out out. He grips to the other name, the right name, with shaky hands and wrests himself free-_

-

He was punched awake, and then Hinata had to wait until his arms woke up too, so that he could touch his fingers to his jaw and make sure it was all still connected. Owari was sat ontop of him, looking a lot more bothered than he liked to see her.

'You were screaming,' she said.

'So you punched me?'

She shrugged. 'Got you up, dinnit. It was only a _little_ punch.'

She rolled off the bed and stretched so hard that he could hear her bones click. Now that he was awake and had proved himself lucid, she looked as though she'd stopped worrying completely. He felt a very sudden, very fierce throb of gratitude for her then; amidst all this uncertainty and second-guessing of himself and everyone else, Owari was single-minded, focused, reassuring. She leant against the door and rubbed her belly.

'Breakfast's up,' she said, and winked. 'Race you there.'

 

 

He lost the race, and was happy to do so.

Breakfast was handled by Sonia, meaning that everyone got neat bowls of steamed rice and carefully measured bowls of miso soup. There were side dishes too: small dishes of pickles (as expected, devoid of any pickled plums), grilled fish, and a bowl of rice porridge for all five diners.

Wait, no, only four.

Four?

Hinata looked at the table where everyone else was already sat chatting and eating - Owari had managed to get most of her food around her mouth, like usual, and was talking animatedly with her mouth full. Kuzuryuu sat next to her, and Sonia across...

'Where's Souda?' he asked as he slid into the remaining seat.

He saw Sonia and Kuzuryuu exchange a glance. Then Sonia went back to neatly ferrying portions of fish into her ricebowl with her chopsticks, head bowed, so it was left to Kuzuryuu to face Hinata and mumble, 'he's workin' on the guys in the tanks.'

'That's good, isn't it?'

'Yes,' Sonia said airily. Hinata couldn't help but notice that she was grinding her chopsticks against the fish, so that flesh flaked off and its thin little body rocked back and forth. 'It will be good. A much more productive passage of his time.'

'Usage.'

'I know,' Sonia snipped. The fish's body fell into two torn pieces in her bowl. Her shoulders relaxed and she turned to face Hinata properly, her face pinched and pale with worry. 'Sorry, Hinata-san. I did not mean to lash out at you.'

He smiled to show her it was okay. There was an awkward gap in the conversation while Sonia refused to say anything more and Kuzuryuu hovered, and Hinata felt rather kept in the dark. Eventually, after half a minute of silence other than Akane's frenzied chewing, Kuzuryuu blurted out 'I caught him stalking her this morning.'

'Kuzuryuu-san,' Sonia said. Her voice was as sharp as cut glass.

'Well I _did!_ Look, we can't cover up this shit, 'kay? It's important. I was goin' to the research facility this morning to-' his voice cracked here, but he hurried on through it, while glaring at Hinata as though daring him to comment, 'to see, y'know, _her_. Sonia was there as well, she got there first. And y'know, we had our own people to see, so we kept to ourselves, but then I hear this clattering from behind Nidai's tank, and Nidai's is right next to Tanaka's, so-'

'He had his toolset with him,' Sonia said. 'For subterfuge. He was holding a screwdriver and watching me from behind the container.'

'So I said, real loudly, "Hey, Souda, you here to work on those tanks like you were talkin' about?" and he freezes up and goes "What?" and I just keep talkin' bullshit about how he said he was gonna work on the tanks until he sat down and started doing it.' Kuzuryuu rolled his eyes. 'Asshole.'

'He _is_ an asshole,' Akane chimed in. 'I can beat 'im up for ya Sonia, if ya want.'

'That is quite alright,' Sonia said, smiling, but she swished a few helpings of fish out of her bowl and into Akane's. 'Anyway, he is doing useful work now. It all worked out.'

They finished eating in an awkward, unchallenged silence. Kuzuryuu kept his one good eye focused on his food, Sonia finished her bowls and arranged them in a neat pile. Akane continued eating. And continued eating. And then asked Sonia if she had made any more. Hinata and Sonia eventually left her at the table with Kuzuryuu, eagerly palming rice out of the cooker and into her open mouth while he told her to slow down, harshly at first, then softer.

 

The two of them walked out into the morning sunlight together. Sonia closed her eyes as they opened the doors, smiling as wide as she could manage. She took hold of Hinata’s hand once they were both outside, her palm warm and soft and dry.

‘Did you sleep well, Hinata-san?’

He hadn’t been aware of it, but his eyes were on her lips. A flash of the dream from last night washed over him and then receded – not enough to remember the specifics, but solid in its sense of dread.

‘Not well,’ he said eventually. And after a longer pause: ‘You?’

‘Not well,’ she repeated. Her expression didn’t waver. ‘I tossed and turned all night. Waking up to...Souda-san... was less than pleasant, after that.’

It hurt to look at her, smiling that wan and terrible smile, while her hands trembled very gently around his own. He couldn't even squeeze her hand back with the conviction she deserved; the best he could manage was the tiniest, feeblest twitch of the fingers.

They'd walked to the shore without even intending to, so Hinata seized the moment of silence as an excuse to take in the scenery. After the perfect, unchanging glamour of the simulation, the real beach felt washed out, more tired; the sand was untidier, whipped into awkward mounds that clumped around the edge of the ocean. The ocean itself stretched out into forever, a cold and even turquoise shimmering out as far as the eye could process. It was much uglier than the fake beach.

Hinata liked it.

'I can talk to Souda for you,' he said.

'No,' she started, and then sighed. 'Though he might listen to you. He likes you, is what I truly believe.'

A chilling thought indeed.

'Besides,' she said, 'I dealt with much worse back home. Souda-san is a very trifling matter. I can handle him.'

She turned away. She had that expression back, the one where her face drew harsh and angled around the bones. Hinata felt his breath slow to a crawl. She wasn't looking at him, and even as she spoke it felt as though he were incidental. She was already off in the world of practicing speeches, of talking herself up to do political battle, and someone as small and ordinary and Hinata shouldn't be able to keep pace.

Except that was all rubbish, wasn't it?

He caught hold of her arm.

'Let me help handle him,' he said, 'he's a pain in the ass, and you're handling enough already.'

'But I just said-'

'Please? As thanks for standing up for me before?'

The ocean roared on in the distance. Sonia's arm twitched underneath his grip, and then slowly, gradually, the emotion bled back into her stance – the shoulders slackened and the jaw unclenched, so that when she turned back towards him she'd lost that implacable air of authority.

'As a favour,' he pressed uncertainly, 'because we're friends.'

'We are friends, aren't we,' she said. It wasn't quite a question. 'Well, in that case. I suppose I can let you take up this one...miniscule...non-issue, for me. As my friend.'

'Happy to help,' he said.

She smiled at him so sweetly, so gratefully. He wished she wouldn't.

Hinata looked back at the ocean. Sonia looked at the ocean too. It was beginning to roll into itself in disconsolate whorls, hard enough for the sea spray the dampen the air, hard enough for Sonia to mutter 'it will storm' and for Hinata to nod yes, probably.

When Sonia reached out for his hand he took it, and wondered if this is what life was to be from here on out: a lot of uncomfortable silences, and learning how to dig your fingernails hard enough into a girl's palm to stop the ache for both of you, and making piles of little promises in hope of building towards the big ones.

She gave him her excuses to leave once the wind kicked into a howl ('I need to brush up on recipes for dinner, I can't have them getting bored'). Hinata let her go without saying a word. He sucked in his breath in, harshly, until it hurt.

The research facility looming in the distance. The flapping noises from the sea smacking into the shore. The quietness. The coldness. He held the breath so long his chest began to buckle.

It was only when he was good and dizzy with breathlessness that he trusted himself to start walking back over the bridge.

 

 


End file.
